Biography
Janet I. Traub was drawn to the human face before she had the words for why. Trained as a child in the disciplines of realism at the Shepy National School of Art in Edmonton, she received the Harold Garry Award for excellence among six hundred young artists, then entered the University of Alberta as one of thirty students chosen from hundreds of applicants. The program of the day was devoted to abstraction, and she gave it an honest effort, learning, quite literally, to throw paint. The experience left her with respect for a language that would never be her own. Her pull was toward the figure, the summit, the most demanding subject in painting, and the one she would spend her life climbing.
Twenty years of daily practice followed, and with them the great teaching ateliers of Europe. Traub studied portraiture at the Florence Academy of Art and the Academy of Realist Art in Edinburgh, where the methods of the old masters are still taught brush by brush. From that classical foundation she built a style entirely her own. The rules gave her precision. The signature is feeling. Her process is exacting. Each painting exists whole in her mind before the first mark, and inside that vision lives its reason for being, the emotion the work must carry. Then the discipline begins: the drawing flawless, the hierarchy of light flawless, and at the end the vision returns to guide the final details, where a painting either comes alive or falls silent. She paints on linen sized with rabbit-skin glue, on a titanium ground, in Italian oils chosen for permanence, because she believes a painting is a promise to the future.
Traub has no interest in decoration. A painting, to her, has one job: to move the person standing in front of it. Her subjects are the people history tends to look past, and her portraits carry both the individual and the moment they live in. Painting a Rohingya child, she discovered that the palette she had developed over two decades required no change at all, only different measure. The same colours, the same light, for every human face. She has carried that discovery with her since.
Her paintings have been shortlisted three times for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and selected as a finalist for ModPortrait, with exhibitions at the Real Círculo Artístico de Barcelona and in Madrid. Her work has shown at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, in New York, London, Zaragoza, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and in 2026 she presented her first solo exhibition, Senza Fine, in the Winter Garden of the Helvetia & Bristol in Florence. In autumn 2026 she exhibits at the Salmagundi Club in New York with the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, founded in 1896 for women artists. The National Gallery of Canada holds her work in its archives as a cultural asset.
A new body of work is under way: a series of paintings that turn toward the suffering the world hurries past, with children at its centre, intended to travel as a solo exhibition. Traub lives and paints in Canmore, Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies.
CHRONOLOGY
| 2026 | ModPortrait Finalist, Real Círculo Artístico de Barcelona (May 28 to June 30). Senza Fine, solo exhibition, Winter Garden of the Helvetia & Bristol, Florence (June 27 to 29) and Geko Art Studio, Florence (July 1 to 15). Harmony of Vision, Hsinchu Art Museum, Taiwan (July 1 to 15). Harmony of Vision, Illuminati Fine Art Gallery, Hong Kong (September 3 to 19). ModPortrait Finalist, Auditorium of Arroyomolinos, Madrid (October 2 to 30). Harmony of Vision, Agrupación Artística Aragonesa, Zaragoza (October 16 to 31). Small Works Exhibition, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Salmagundi Club, New York (October 25 to November 14) |
| 2025 | Artelibre 25th Anniversary, 20x20: Atlantic Gallery, New York; Agrupación Artística Aragonesa, Zaragoza; Museo de la Ciudad de Móstoles, Madrid. More Than Realism, XIX Edition, Galería Artelibre at the Agrupación Artística Aragonesa, Zaragoza. Women in Art London, Artio Gallery |
| 2024 | First Street Gallery, New York. European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), Barcelona |
| 2022 | The Pomegranate Lovers series begins |
| 2021 | APortraits of Resilience, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
| 2020 | Suppan Fine Arts, Vienna. Gallery representation |
| 2014-18 | BP Portrait Award, National Portrait Gallery, London. Three works shortlisted |
| National Gallery of Canada. Work archived, Library and Archives | |
| 2017 | Florence Academy of Art, Florence. Still life, portrait techniques and traditions |
| 2015 | Academy of Realist Art, Edinburgh. Portrait painting |
| 2009 | Completes studio in Canmore, Alberta |
| 2006 | Returns to full-time oil painting |
| 1979 | Alberta by Teens, group exhibition, Art Gallery of Alberta |
| 1977-79 | University of Alberta, Fine Arts. Painting and visual communication design |
| 1972 | Harold Garry Award in Art, Edmonton, Alberta |
| 1969-74 | Shepy National School of Art, Edmonton, Alberta. Oil Painting, Drawing, Watercolors |